The Torch Wormhole

Jonathan_S wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:As to forts being a waste, that doesn't count that when the Alignment does start using that wormhole for anything, they will want it defended on that side and have the equivlent of an Astro Control station for it. Even after they eventualy "deal" with Torch, it represents an access to something they want hidden and very few people outside the Alignment know exactly what you are going to find on the other side. Staff the forts mostly with Dariusians and an Alpha Command staff. Cheap enough insurance to act as a rat-trap for any ship that comes through without permission.

It's a guard force, do the same thing as Manticoer and move the modular sections of the forts there for assembly (more workforce training) and some place where you could put pods with Cataphracts at short removes to thicken coverage and extend the range against anything that might fight it's way through.

It's also a location for a protected logistics support base at a fair distance from Darius. It's not like the Alignment can't aquire the amount of trained staff to install and operate warehouses and even a small repair yard plus a waystation and R&R faciity. Eventualy this is a nodal point for the Alighment Empire next to Erwhon and both Erwhon's wormhole access to the (eventualy to be the Former) SL but the Maya sector. You put the good stuff behind the door.

There's one minor downside to putting your repair yard on the far side of a wormhole; but it can be mitigated. And as you say there are security advantages to having it "behind the door".

The minor downside is ships with damage to their alpha nodes (or whatever the MAN spider ships use to safely transit wormholes) or hyper generators. Most systems aren't in a grav wave and so damaged ships can still retreat through hyper with damaged alpha nodes (they just need to avoid any grav waves). Even if they lose their hyper generator they can potentially still retreat by having a buddy expand their generator volume large enough to bring them both into (and later out of) hyper. But it doesn't seem to be possible to transit a wormhole without both working sails and hyper generator of your own. So if MAN ships get damaged and fall back on Congo to reach a repair yard at The Twins they won't be able to get to it. They could potentially go the long way - but if you could avoid having that systems actual location in their computers then you eliminate one way your enemies might find it; plus it's undoubtedly a much longer trip for a damaged ship. The better workaround would be to have either a mobile repair ship or a ship-carrying ship based in The Twins that could pop forward to Congo and either patch up or bring back any damaged units that made it that far.

We saw this transit problem firsthand with the delay in getting Hexapuma back to Manticore after the Battle of Monica. She needed months with a repair ship to patch her up enough to transit the wormhole under her own power (and then immediately went into the repair yard to finish the rest of her repairs)

cthia wrote:Why can't the damaged LD and the repair ship retire to an undisclosed region of space and effect repairs there? Ships, like colliers, rendezvous with the rest of the fleet at classified coordinates all the time. It would be like repairing your car on a vacant side road off an out of the way back road. At least until she's able to transit.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:
#2. Torch should be taken only after the Streak Boat arrives with confirmation the fireworks have begun. Torch is the least defended. Getting word to her will be too little too late. Also, I am not proposing the move on Haven will be based out of Torch. I am proposing the support of the operation to be based out of Torch by deploying units forward to take the wormhole and allow for other forces to come thru.

BTW, I am also positing the coordination of the traditional warships of the RFN. Like everyone agrees, their original plan is kaput. They may decide to permanently take Torch and set up housekeeping with their RFN. Why are you all assuming it would be easy to retake Torch? The GA's goodies are not located in the Torch system. And I'm sure the MA will shoot the ass off of anything trying to drag in huge detection arrays to detect the Lennys. Why can't the Torch whj be just as difficult to take as the MWJ, if the RFN is just as formidable as the GA? If not, they can always be ready to pull a Houdini thru the wormhole.

Thanks for clarifying. I'd misunderstood your earlier posts and that led to us somewhat talking past each other.

And I don't know that Torch would be easy to retake. But if the only place you know the enemy is is occupying Torch then at least is a place were you can try hitting back. Whereas until Darius is located Haven and Manticore would be just as unable to launch a counterattack to a Oyster Bay redux as Manticore and Grayson were to the original. Very hard to hit back when you've no idea where the enemy is.

That said, it might be to the MAlign's benefit to expose an (ultimately expendable) target like Torch as it could give their Lenny Dets (once resupplied from the initial strikes) a place to attempt to ambush naval units that couldn't be caught during the initial strikes. Even if they end up temporarily yielding the system and terminus it's give them a chance to try and further bleed the Grand Alliance forces.
(AKA It's a trap!)

Though I'd say Torch would be difficult to retake in an entirely different way than the Manticoran Junction. The Junction is deadliest to attack by transiting from a remote terminus (basically suicide). But even in normal space it's defended by a significant number of the most modern forts anybody has ever seen - which by now should be equipped with full Apollo capabilities. They should by now be at least as capable as the forts installed on the Lynx terminus and before Apollo was added to either side those Lynx forts were supposed to be able to stand off a couple hundred RMN SD(P)s!

We know that the MAlign hasn't yet shown any ability to replicate the performance or FTL fire control of Apollo. And they likely won't have time to construct significant numbers of modern forts at the Torch terminus. So the GA forces wouldn't face that exact defense, and they'd definitely be attacking from normal space because even if crazy enough to want to mount a wormhole assault through the terminus they don't know where the other end of the Congo wormhole is.

On the other hand, the MAlign have ships and graser torps that are virtually undetectable, and can drop Cataphract pods to act as minefields, and with nothing in the system that must be defended at all costs they can afford to play a slower ambush game - because they don't have to make a last stand anywhere. After all, what does it mater if the Grand Alliance forces blockage the terminus or occupy Torch orbit? That just ties them to one spot for the MAlign units to sneak up on.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:There's one minor downside to putting your repair yard on the far side of a wormhole; but it can be mitigated. And as you say there are security advantages to having it "behind the door".

The minor downside is ships with damage to their alpha nodes (or whatever the MAN spider ships use to safely transit wormholes) or hyper generators. Most systems aren't in a grav wave and so damaged ships can still retreat through hyper with damaged alpha nodes (they just need to avoid any grav waves). Even if they lose their hyper generator they can potentially still retreat by having a buddy expand their generator volume large enough to bring them both into (and later out of) hyper. But it doesn't seem to be possible to transit a wormhole without both working sails and hyper generator of your own. So if MAN ships get damaged and fall back on Congo to reach a repair yard at The Twins they won't be able to get to it. They could potentially go the long way - but if you could avoid having that systems actual location in their computers then you eliminate one way your enemies might find it; plus it's undoubtedly a much longer trip for a damaged ship. The better workaround would be to have either a mobile repair ship or a ship-carrying ship based in The Twins that could pop forward to Congo and either patch up or bring back any damaged units that made it that far.

We saw this transit problem firsthand with the delay in getting Hexapuma back to Manticore after the Battle of Monica. She needed months with a repair ship to patch her up enough to transit the wormhole under her own power (and then immediately went into the repair yard to finish the rest of her repairs)

Why can't the damaged LD and the repair ship retire to an undisclosed region of space and effect repairs there? Ships, like colliers, rendezvous with the rest of the fleet at classified coordinates all the time. It would be like repairing your car on a vacant side road off an out of the way back road. At least until she's able to transit.

cthia wrote:Also, wouldn't it be nice if storyline gave us our first Forts transiting a wormhole, from Darius to Torch. Stealthy Forts. Mean, stealthy Forts.

Rooks to Queen 1. Check.

If MA Forts scale up to the LD
as
GA Forts scale up to the SD

Merry X-Mas Wesleys!

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Also, wouldn't it be nice if storyline gave us our first Forts transiting a wormhole, from Darius to Torch. Stealthy Forts. Mean, stealthy Forts.

Rooks to Queen 1. Check.

If MA Forts scale up to the LD
as
GA Forts scale up to the SD

Merry X-Mas Wesleys!

Certainly something the size of a fort could transit a wormhole - unless the wormhole had an extremely low mass ceiling. (IIRC we're told the Manticoran Junction had the highest known mass ceiling - could handled the largest known mass transit. But also IIRC we aren't given an indication of how widely the mass ceilings vary. Is is a factor of 2, of 10, of 100? We don't know, so we don't know if any wormholes top out as low as, say, 20 million tons)

The reason they don't is because the fort would be very inefficient for its size if forced to accept the compromises required for it to self-transit a wormhole. It would have to give up a lot of interior space for a hyper generator and accept a ship-like hull form with full Alpha nodes to get the sails.
And for something that would hardly ever be done.

If you really want to move entire operational forts forward you'd be better off building a stupidly large fort transporter. Something with a hyper generator and alpha nodes in the right spots proportional to a size large enough to carry a fort. It could mostly be open scafolding as long as the nodes and impeller rooms were in the right spots. Using it you'd be able to bring intact forts forward one at a time. And that way once they're in place their combat efficiency isn't impacted by the compromises needed for a rare strategic movement.
The fort transporter would still spend most of it's life hanging around with nothing to do, but at least you presumably didn't sink those resources into every single fort so you've got less wasted capability once they're in place.

cthia wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Because the DB did know. It couldn't not have known.

You got textev? Because from that side of the junction, all roads led to ignorance.

cthia wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:If you really want to move entire operational forts forward you'd be better off building a stupidly large fort transporter. Something with a hyper generator and alpha nodes in the right spots proportional to a size large enough to carry a fort. It could mostly be open scafolding as long as the nodes and impeller rooms were in the right spots. Using it you'd be able to bring intact forts forward one at a time. And that way once they're in place their combat efficiency isn't impacted by the compromises needed for a rare strategic movement.
The fort transporter would still spend most of it's life hanging around with nothing to do, but at least you presumably didn't sink those resources into every single fort so you've got less wasted capability once they're in place.

I see. But if you built something like that, is there a reason it can't double as a backup to tow a damaged LD?

Jonathan_S wrote:Should just be mater of large enough voids to dock either and then wrapping the necessary ship systems in the area left outside those voids but inside the safe volume prescribed by your alpha node placement. (Might or might not end up a little larger than a uni-task design that could only carry an LD or only carry a <mumble>-mton fort. But if you do build some such beasts it seems good to invest in the flexibility; even if it's a little larger/costlier)


And in fact a ship-carrier for an LD was my other suggestion for a damaged LD on the other side of a wormhole from its repair yard. But hadn't thought of making it capable of moving a fort.